Making news headline
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: May 23, 2014 -

With more than 70,000 babies reportedly born in India everyday, which is almost one baby for every minute, the birth of a child or entering of a new life to this earth, as some people may like to say poetically, is just an ordinary event, nothing earthshaking about it, in most Indian families.

So, the birth of a baby in the Primary Health Centre (PHC) of the border town Moreh in Manipur may not be having so much of any element to surprise the people in other parts of the country.

But it was a different thing and managed to make some headline news in the State. It was not that there was anything extraordinary in the baby which was delivered in Moreh PHC on May 21.

It was just a baby, a boy weighing 4.5 kg with no extra legs, hands, eyes or ears, etc, etc.

On the same day, many babies may have also been born in hospitals and health centres across the State just like in other parts of the country. But the birth of the baby in Moreh PHC was considered a newsworthy event for the simple fact that it was the first child ever born in the PHC after it was established 20 years back.

All these years, no delivery cases have been done in this PHC, simply because the Government has not posted adequate adequate medical staffs and provided the required equipments.

Even if the baby boy which was born on May 21 was the first delivery case handled in the PHC at Moreh and media reports have described it as creating a history, it would be surely ridiculous to conclude and live under the assumption that prior to this no new babies may have ever blessed the married couples in Moreh town.

As in other parts of the State and the country, new babies are also entering the world of the border town every day, if not almost every minute.

But in the absence of medical staffs and equipments in their local PHC, the expectant parents have to come down to Imphal and other places for delivery cases all these years.

This should make us wonder and think over the difficulties expectant parents in Moreh have been facing all these years.

But the successive Governments which came to power in Manipur have not deemed it fit to look after the requirements in Moreh PHC so as to it functional despite public protests and demands all these years.

This was very unfortunate, specially when the Government claims that its Health Department is "fully committed in the total health care of its people in the spirit of Health for All" and that "the priority of the Department is to provide the optimum health needs of the people in general and particularly to those living in rural ad tribal areas of the State."